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. 2025 Aug;38(8):e70095.
doi: 10.1002/nbm.70095.

Segmented Look-Locker With Inversion Efficiency Correction (SELLIE) for Accurate and Precise Cardiac T1 Mapping in Rat Hearts at 9.4-T MRI

Lili Zhang  1 , Ida Marie Hauge-Iversen  1 , Haelin Kim  1 , Einar S Nordén  1 , Ivar Sjaastad  1 , Emil K S Espe  1
Affiliations

Segmented Look-Locker With Inversion Efficiency Correction (SELLIE) for Accurate and Precise Cardiac T1 Mapping in Rat Hearts at 9.4-T MRI

Lili Zhang et al. NMR Biomed. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a multislice, segmented electrocardiogram (ECG)-triggered, respiration-gated Look-Locker T1 mapping sequence with inversion efficiency (IE) correction, optimized for high-field MRI. The segmented Look-Locker with inversion efficiency correction (SELLIE) was validated in phantom and in vivo studies using an agarose/NiCl2 phantom, 5 healthy rats, 23 aortic-banding rats, and 7 sham-operated rats. The accuracy, precision, and repeatability of SELLIE were compared with the conventional Look-Locker technique without IE correction using Pearson correlation analysis and the Kruskal-Wallis H test. In the phantom experiments, SELLIE demonstrated significantly improved accuracy (T1 estimation error: 0.80 ± 1.17%) compared with the uncorrected Look-Locker method (3.70 ± 1.12%). Additionally, SELLIE showed superior precision (coefficient of variation: 0.71 ± 0.35%) relative to the uncorrected method (1.15 ± 0.39%). In vivo experiments with healthy rats showed good precision for both SELLIE (1.70 ± 0.61%) and the uncorrected technique (1.04 ± 0.49%). In the sham and aortic-banding rats, T1 values from SELLIE correlated strongly with the end-diastolic pressure-volume relationship (EDPVR) (r = 0.57, p = 0.001), outperforming the uncorrected method (r = 0.37, p = 0.04). The mean myocardium native T1 times of the sham rats (~17 weeks old) from the uncorrected Look-Locker was 1567 ± 32 ms, whereas the mean myocardium T1 times from SELLIE was 1723 ± 47 ms. In conclusion, SELLIE provides accurate and precise T1 mapping for high-field MRI, correcting inversion pulse imperfections. This technique enables reliable longitudinal scanning and comparison across animal models.

Keywords: cardiac T1 mapping; inversion efficiency correction; segmented Look–Locker; small animal 9.4‐T MRI.

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